Posts tagged flash sales

Last week San Francisco based GleeMaster launched as yet another members-only e-commerce flash sale site. The site competes directly with Rue La La, Hautelook, ideeli and Gilt to bring the best short-term deals on luxury brands and lifestyle services at up to 70% off to their customers.

GleeMaster.com will run sales for 72 hours. The site launched with decent sales from Versace, Canali, David Yurman, Marc Jacobs, Burberry, BCBG Max Azria and English Laundry.

GleeMaster is doing something unique (for the time being) to differentiate themselves from the competitors. They have the world of the Gleeters™, which is a social media platform where members can upload and share stylish photographs. Users should use this platform to connect with their friends and other members of the network by posting photos and commenting on other people’s photos. Days into the official site launch, there are still very few photos in the Gleeters section. The application seems a bit premature. The photos aren’t displayed in the correct ratio, and from what I can tell members do not gain any points by sharing photos – but that could be coming down the pipeline.

To recap: I don’t know about you, but I feel like it’s time-consuming enough to stay on top of the deal sites that already exist. Each Saturday and Sunday it takes me about an hour to scour the flash sale sites I’m already a member of and figure out what really is worth buying (the deals aren’t always as great as they seem), I don’t know if I have much more time or interest to continue adding more sites to my routine. Will you be joining GleeMaster?

ideeli, on of the fastest-growing, members-only online flash site, announced that Katrina Szish (pictured below) will join them through the holiday season as a fashion and lifestyle contributor. Szish, is an authority on lifestyle, entertainment, fashion, and beauty trends. In addition to her new role with ideeli, Szish is a style contributor for CBS News “The Early Show,” a correspondent for TB’ “Movie & A Makeover” and she is editor-in-chief of the online fashion magazine, PinkMemo.com (which is a site I was not familiar with…did you know about it?).

At ideeli, Szish will break down and demystify the holiday season’s most important lifestyle, fashion, and beauty trends for members, and serve as the company’s primary broadcast spokesperson.

The holiday season can be both thrilling and stressful for shoppers as they navigate a crowded and confusing retail landscape….ideeli already has built a reputation for providing members with a fun, friendly and relevant shopping experience. The holiday lineup will offer even more opportunities for the stylish and financially-savvy, and I look forward to contributing my own expertise to help eliminate the stress and focus on the thrill.

I like eyeshadow, but I’m only interested in specific colors and brands; and because I’m sort of frugal, I only buy eyeshadows on Cyber Monday or from flash sale sites like ideeli, Gilt Groupe and Rue La La. I realize I’m not that makeup-trend-forward, but to me, restocking my eyeshadows semi-yearly is about all I need.

My most recent eyeshadows came from Rue La La, in gift form, from Amy the concierge at Rue La La. She knew I had a bad user experience while their website wasn’t working properly, so she sent me the Smashbox ‘Eye Wish’ Palette and the Tarte TEN Limited Edition Collector’s Palette.

Smashbox ‘Eye Wish’ Palette

This is a nicely packaged limited -edition palette with 12 shadows and 4 cream eyeliners (which I really need) and DNA mascara. The palette also comes with a very informative Look Book that will help me figure out how to put this stuff on properly.

Overstock.com unveiled Eziba.com earlier this week. Eziba is an exclusive, flash sale site featuring the latest home decor products from many leading brands, at great prices. If you’ve been living under a rock, I’ll fill you in on how Flash Sales Sites work, the site works with retailers and brands to create a short term sale that usually lasts a couple of days max, and is selling items near 50% of their original retail price. Established sales sites include Gilt Groupe, One Kings Lane, Ideeli, Ruelala and Hautelook (Beyond the Rack is crap…don’t even register to be a member, it’s not worth it).

The best part about Eziba.com is they can leverage some of the benefits of Overstock.com, such as $2.95 for shipping on ALL orders. Most sales sites charge $10 for shipping regardless of weight or price of your order, so this is a big win for Eziba – also remember Eziba is selling home decor, which obviously, tends to be heavier than um say a little black dress.

Oh, and if you’re already an existing Overstock.com member just sign in using your current username and password and start shopping!

There are many flash sales sites on the web, Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, HauteLook and Ideeli. These site offer their members 50%-70% off retail goods. Newbie RowNine is hoping to differentiate itself by offering a more personalized platform that allows users to customize the types of clothing, handbags and accessories that are delivered to them.

On RowNine, users will now be prompted to specify what types of clothing, brands, bags, and more items they are interested in purchasing. Customers can indicate their preferences when perusing offers and merchandise on the RowNine Website by giving a “thumbs up or down” to build their preference profile.
RowNine will then source and recommend customized products to the users. RowNine’s recommendation engine will integrate a shopper’s clickstream and purchase history as well as group matching with customers with similar interests to deliver targeted recommendations. Customers will also have the ability to publish products and purchases they like via their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

While the space is competitive, the model is certainly ambitious and could prove to be attractive to shoppers who want more customized offerings from online sample sales. One of the biggest challenges for RowNine will be to attract users; the site only has a hundred thousand members as compared to the millions competitors have. But the online sample sale space is still growing, and clearly there’s room for a number of strong players.